1207 The Tube programme and all that All this and Heaven too

This writing marks the completion of the second series of 101 Myspace writing, or as I now wish the work to be known as 101.75, a total of 1074 pieces if added to those on AOL, within 2 years. It commenced on May 24 2006, with 19 pieces that month, and then in June 151, July 76, August 76, September 99, October 96, November 76 December 87, January 2007 62, February 69, March 61. My objective is to complete a further set of 100.75 by the anniversary of my first year on Myspace on February 17th.

I commenced to write this piece while listening to a commentary of Newcastle at home to Portsmouth. Within nine minutes the score was Newcastle 0 Portsmouth 1, a minute later it was Newcastle 0. Portsmouth 2 and then Newcastle 0 Portsmouth after 10 minutes, with two mistakes. A scrambled own goal via Michael Owen made it 1-3 and from horror disaster the fifty thousand crowd sensed all was not lost.

There are many advantages to living in the North East and one of these the absence of traffic jams. When I travelled, usually by car, once a month to London, for a decade, I dreaded the last fifty odd miles where the choice was the M 25 stuck in a slow moving end less four and three lane chain of cars for miles from the area approaching London Airport through to Purley, or into central London, past Lords, across Oxford Street, to Victoria, with an option of routes through South London, with slow moving traffic and dozen upon dozen of traffic lights. Such was the nightmare of this apart of the journey that after several years I commenced to break up the journey, with a leisurely start, a visit to the cinema or to a country house, an overnight stay at a Travel Lodge paying as little as £5 a night, £10 or £15 and never more than around £25. And then after breakfast facing a morning drive in traffic, traffic, traffic.

Several years before this I learnt the reality of London traffic when serving on a sub committee of a committee organised by the Home Office which offered a car parking space for meetings which commenced at 10.30 am. I remember the first occasion well in that unsure of what the traffic would be like I set off after 8 am probably nearer 8.30 thinking the ten to twelve miles would take a hour to an hour and half which would give me timer to go through the papers once more and get ready any contribution, or chat with other colleagues as they arrived. I had anticipated some traffic congestion as I approached inner London, having in the later 1960's travelled for three years from Teddington to Ealing in West London a journey of a similar distance. I just had not anticipated the growth in traffic out into the suburbs in a decade and a half and arrived just as the meeting commenced. The alternative was a walk to the station, a forty minute train ride usually standing, and a crushed underground ride of one station from Victoria to St James, on a walk. I thought of these experiences as for the first time in years I encountered major congestion last night in the City of Newcastle.

For the second time in a week I miscalculated the time required to journey from my home, on this occasion to the Sage Concert Halls for a curious event to celebrate 25 years since the birth of The Tube, the Iconic contemporary music show produced by Tyne Tees Television for Channel Four in Newcastle from 1982 to 1987, 121 episodes and 10 specials. Given the previous experience I should have set off at 6.30 but it was after seven. I had planned to travel by car to Hewarth, then take the Metro to Gateshead and a special bus service to the entrance of the Sage. I decided not to risk a late arrival and took a taxi although I could have kept to the original plan as it was well after eight before the evening commenced. It was after 11pm when I I decided to take the first special bus which first went to the Baltic, then to the Quayside in central Newcastle and the City station, rather than wait the nine minutes for a bus which would have taken the short distance from the Sage to Gateshead interchange station.

From the moment the bus crossed over the swing bridge onto the Newcastle Quayside the traffic was solid and slow moving, from those leaving after a night out at the theatre, cinema, or concert hall or music gig and those arriving for the night clubs. The streets were pulsating with mainly young people, mostly in single sex groups, although as previously observed there was an age range down by the Quayside. One of the venues, a bar, which might also serve food, has been renamed Rumpole's, after the fictitious barrister created by John Mortimer who frequented a bar called Pomeroy's, popular with members of the legal profession. One group of young men, whop engaged in conversation with a single young man with the appearance of a bouncer, explained that they had stayed in Newcastle after work, doing the pubs and bars looking for lasses, and without success were heading for the night clubs in Shields, where they also had lodgings. I was right about the bouncer as he explained that he guarded the entrance to the restricted area of one of the clubs.

And the event? Was a little disappointing. There were six individuals on the platform but no presenter although Jules Holland did a good interview in which he described how he was appointed and the significance of the show as the creator of a culture in which musicians and comedians would come up to Newcastle, often staying over for the party atmosphere although BA reorganised its Friday flight schedule to bring up those who wished to travel from London for the day or return after the evening performance.

The most rewarding aspect of the evening was the account as to how the show got off the ground, including a meeting in a Newcastle fish and chip restaurant in which Sir Jeremy Isaacs, the founder and chief executive of Chanel allegedly told the commissioning director and programme directors, Don't' f…k up. The use of descriptive expletives was a feature of the Tube, with Jules Holland having to resign after he unintentionally swore on a live programme which went out early evening tea time and was watched by school age children. The programme also gained notoriety because of the outlandish appearance and behaviour of its main presenter with Jools Holland, the later Paula Yates, the former wife of Sir Bob Geldorf. Paul had responsibility for the first 45 mins of the programme which concentrated on interviews, fashion items and comedy, with Paula conducting her interviews on a bed and one on occasion persuading Sting to remove his trousers.

It was the second 45 minutes of live music performances which made the show essential viewing for popular music promoters, managers and record producers and who in some instances snapped up a new artist to make them instant successes, with the Liverpool band Frankie Goes to Hollywood giving their raunchy performance of Relax. They immediately appeared on Top of the Tops and Relax shot to number 1 although he video was banned by the BBC and MTV which had just started.
For young people to day there are over 20 music dedicated stations providing 24 hour entertainment as well a similar number of radio stations with the number exponentially increasing through the use of the internet, there are hundred of music live music gigs and an area such as Tyne and Wear but back in in the early ages, when I was middle aged, until MTV there was only Top of the Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test was coming to an end and the Tube was a significant break through with its midsummer special programmes lasting five hours.

Looking at the footage of the first programmes in black and white I was struck by the audience, unsophisticated , also church like in their wonderment at the experience unfolding around them and how different from the lively crowds in the Quayside and Bigg Market after the show, many looking as if they had come from on were going to appear on Top of the Pops during its sexual hey day of up short skirt close ups and Pans People. Some of those young original young people were in the audience at the Sage from a hand sup request. There was also a gathering of insiders with many of the crew and production team. My taxi driver said that there had been a feature on the show on regional news before he came out to work for the evening.

The disappointing aspect was the absence of an appearance on the night or a film tribute collation from a major performer. Heaven 17 was a Sheffield based band which appeared on the first show and lead singer was part of the platform team and because he had agreed to participate whereas I suspect many others invited had not, an inordinate amount of attention was given to his work with two numbers from the original show and then a ten minute film, which was out of proportion to what the Tube came to stand for. I very much enjoyed the first part of the show but the second was something of anti climax, rushed because of over running with some clips cuts.

This was an interesting project something of an experiment for the Sage and there was no doubting the enthusiasm of its organiser who acted as chair of the panel and the best were the reminisces of panel members who I thought they were less convincing when they attempted to evaluate the show or comment on whether a similar kind of rough at the edges spontaneous show was required as an antidote to the polished scripted professional music channels and videos and orchestrated live music and dance performances of today.

This is an appropriate moment to mention that New astle eventually lost 1-4 at home indicating what I anticipated as a failure of Sam Alladyce I only know how to play one way with also ran players. Sunderland are at Man City who lost heavily at Chelsea last week so theatre is no expectation of a match which is live on Monday night TV. The following week it is Sunderland laying Newcastle at home with both teams wish to give their loyal fans something to shout about for the rest of the season, or at least the return Derby game.

Earlier in the day I saw the beginning and the end of a melodrama with a young Bette Davis showing the talent which made her I to one of the finest Actors of Hollywood. There were sugary children and one sided characterisations and dodgy script. All this and Heaven too. In past years when it came to a choice between the X Factor singing and the dancing with celebrities there was no context, and last year was exceptional with the amazing Leone and several others destined for a career in 'the business.' This year there are several weak finalists and no one world class uniquely outstanding, and the youngest was booted out when it emerged she had put on phone record a violent outburst involving a former friend. However there is a former school teacher from Luton who has a great voice and the right kind of image and personality. The programme also manufactured two groups one of five, originally six young men and one of six young women, who have talent and are learning presentational skills quickly. There is also one odd looking young man with a powerful stage voice and polished entertaining presentation. But the dancers took the honours.

My chess playing skills matches by lack of concentration and application since the monster work effort a week ago and having reached 50 and 40 runs of wins on level 2 I have not failed to progress into double figures several time in succession but suffered several checkmates. I know what the problem is but the mood and inclination is against making the required changes. So I shall watch the first 15 mins of the Newcastle horror show, the masochist that I am and then start the final episodes of the Great War to mark the third series of 101.75 writing.

1201 Casanova a play

Last night, as I was saying, I left the theatre at the interval. The work was called Casanova although if this is a male name the play ought to have been called Casanove although traditionally the converse would have been batter. I was attracted to a play about the life of Casanova. I have seen nothing better since the 1971 BBC TV series written by Dennis Potter with Frank Finlay in the starring role, but I also liked the 1976 Fellini Film with Donald Sutherland and I have a Men of Destiny volume on his life, a work by Chevalier de Seingalt, translated by Bonamy Debree. I ought to have known that this was an experimental concept work for two three reasons. Casanova in this work is played by a young female actress whereas in most other works it is about an old man reflecting back, now where I have heard that approach before? Secondly it was billed as a comedy, and I usually avoid anything which sets out to attract an audience as a comedy. Thirdly the company attempted to get bums on seats by displaying the part of the naked bum of the lead actress although she admitted on local radio that this was a stand in. The radio show was about he fact that it was alleged people had been stealing posters of the play, no doubt to put on their student room walls, and certainly the theatre was more than a quarter full of students, mainly young women, given that it was about half full overall. Anyway I sat there for the first half saying I am not enjoying this, I am not amused, intellectually challenged or emotionally engaged. This is adding nothing to my life and I could be making better use of my time. I blamed myself for not taking more care before making the investment.

I was unsure that I had made the right decision when I attempted to book a ticket for a performances at the Sage next month, w eek Friday in fact. This a celebration of the Tube, a Newcastle music programme twenty five years ago presented by Jools Holland, Paula Yates and Murial Gray for Channel 4. The show" will include a production commentary on the first show, plus exclusively screenings special guest When I appeared to fail to complete a booking twice on the internet I gave up only to receive two tickets in the posy, one of which has been returned. The indications are that the performance is not well supported as the tickets were for rows two and three. Among the long list of performers who emerged through the five years of the show were , the Boomtown Rats, Big Country, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Elvis Costello, Frankie goes to Hollywood, Human League, Iggy Pop, Madonna, Meat Loaf, Paul Young, REM, Simply Red, Siouxie and the Banshees, the Jam, The Pretenders, Thin Lizzy, U2, Ultravox, the Smiths and on and on and on.

However while tempted to get a half season at Newcastle, given the progress being made in results, but not in the quality of the football, and at Durham given their progress, the latter at a fraction of the costs of the football, there is the question of allocated the time if I am to undertake a major work project which could move me into a new dimension for the last phase of my life, winning the lottery or a major premium bond prize being unlikely. Such a win will be necessary to buy a home in the new Ocean Village complex built out of a former industrial shipyard area which was already underway when I last visited in 2004. This is an upmarket residential and leisure development for those with lots of dosh. The Gibraltar radio news hour featured the development today together with the extraordinary development that GB airlines, operated by BA at Gatwick and been sold to Easy Jet for over £100. What this means in terms of flights from other airports and on price remains to be seen. It is such commercial enterprises that has driven the political changes between Gibraltar GB and Spain, and will in due course alter the sovereignty question and the composition of resident voting population changes. The thought of all this is very dissatisfying so I wills top and do something else.

1184 Our Friends in the North

Tomorrow (yesterday I went) I go to a theatrical performance of Our Friends in the North, a TV series which I saw when first broadcast and again subsequently. Although this is a fictional drama it expressed the political and social history of a North East which was very evident when I first arrived in the mid 1970's. It has now changed beyond recognition, I believe!

I missed the conference speech of Ming Campbell, and was very impressed by that of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He had the middle England Scotland Wales and Ireland gravitas which Blair lacked and the power base he established at the Treasury over central and local government departments through budget control will have provided him with the mechanism for at least having some prospect of translating political decisions into effect, although whether the outcome will bear any resemblance to the political aspiration is another matter. Yesterday, as it is now tomorrow, I listened with growing concern about much of what David Cameron had to say. It was clever and will have great appeal to his own supporters but not without reservations from his right wing, however there was much about delegating power to school heads for example or the abolition of ring fencing in local government that would be disastrous and dangerous given my experience and which hopefully should outweigh his main bribe, that of the abolition of the inheritance tax on properties worth under £1 million with those who it will affect most in the outer London suburbs and which are marginal seats.

Overall I thought his approach was likely to have greater appeal than Labour's presently, because of the ten years of government and the attraction of a new group, despite their lack of experience in Government. However if as in the past this was to be an election of Gordon versus David there is no competition. David was the right match for Blair but wrong for Gordon. I am still of the opinion that there is no need for an election unless things about the economy, about terrorism or other nasty's are known and are likely to have great electoral impact, or if he knows that internal division will open up once legislation is put to the Parliamentary test. The one potential nasty which I should have mentioned is the Diana Inquest which has opened and where information has been disclosed which begins to show a different light on previous official investigations. I mention this because one major theme of Our Friends in the North is cover up

This is the second opening of a season's major production of the Playhouse Directed by Chief Executive Erica Wymark that I have experienced. I was not taken with the Potter play Son of Man because I was still full of the experience of Mel Gibson's The Passion and I did not think using the double stage worked. Although this is a long production of a play with approaching a two hour opening act and then approaching a one and half hour second act 19.00 to 22.45 performance I thought it was terrific and having a sequence of dramatic endings which were more effective than the TV series and which enabled the three level structure of the play to be understood as an integrated whole.

Our Friends in the North is fiction but because of the deaths of a number of individuals the programme has a Timeline of real life events which covers in the North East the significant moments in the political life of Newcastle City Boss T Dan Smith, and his subsequent imprisonment for six years for corruption. I worked in local government in the North East just after the prison sentences commenced so I knew politicians and senior officials who knew the man and who did then not look the other way. Without exception they spoke of a dedicated man with a vision and a determination to make the City Newcastle a significantly better place for the majority of all its people. I met Dan when after his release he obtain work for an prison after care organisation, at his request, in an official capacity to discuss the role of a social service department when individuals are prison and afterwards, especially on the impact of partners and children. Having been the only local authority chief officer appointed who had been prison beforehand he expected me to have taken a greater personal interest than I did, but my responsibility was for the policies and services of my authority in general and for the Social Services Department in particular, so I identified the specialist staff in the department who coordinated our work with the Criminal Justice system and its agencies and had no subsequent contact.

While the first level of the play concerns the working of politics in the North East1958-1982, when the play was first performed, starting with the covering up of a accident between a car and bicycle as the driver was a member of the Police Committee and ends where one of the victims considers executing the culprit, much of the play is about a second real life situation when it was found that the a significant group of Metropolitan CID officers were receiving substantial amounts of money to effectively protect the Porn and sex club industry in Soho London from prosecution. Detective Chief Inspector George Fenwick was jailed for 10 years as the chief Architect. As previously mentioned I had spent several years of my youth around Soho because of my interest in Jazz and activist politics and I was aware of street life and the clubs, and subsequently I learnt something of the problems at that time at being a straight cop from someone who had worked for the Met CID.

The third level in the play does not suggest an obvious immediate connection, the time in Northern Rhodesia when in 1965 the Harold Wilson led British Government imposed sanctions on a white minority led independence and where it was subsequently alleged that a British oil supply company found a way through the technicalities to maintain the flow using agents and oil from other countries, just as arms manufacturers are always able to find ways of supply any and every side or interest that wishes to buy their wares. The Timeline also makes reference to the unusual choice of honours in Prime Minister Wilson's resignation list and to one in particular where one individual, the son of a close personal supporter of the former Prime Minister, committed suicide a year later during investigation for fraud. It was established that a former senior Conservative Cabinet Minister was an adviser to one of the companies of this man. The former Minister had resigned as Home Secretary four years earlier because it emerged that he held a directorship in the architectural firm of John Poulson who had also gone to prison for five years for corruption along with T Dan Smith
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The individual who links what happened in Northern Rhodesia before it became Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, with Porn police corruption in Soho, London, and the building of dangerous and unliveable flats on Tyneside is Geordie, was one of the young men who witness the bike accident and cover up. When his loses the love of his life to his best fiend, he decides to make his fortune in London and by accident becomes involved with London porn and club life as personal security and bag man for the man bribing the police at their request. When things hot up Geordie is the fall guy who goes to prison, although in the play the police escape because of the way the enquiry is fixed by those with the most to lose. When Geordie is released is seeks revenge first on the minor villain who has scarred his drug taking soliciting female friend because she has advised that Geordie would know who the bribe taking police were, and then on the boss who betrayed him. He then goes as a mercenary to Northern Rhodesian hired by South Africans to help their friends in the North and in the least credible segment of the play is spared by a ruthless black rebel commander who has recently murdered his former farm master and his wife. It on his return and the funeral of the former Labour and life long socialist activist parent of the third friend in the bike incident that the play comes to an end when Geordie confronts the corrupt politician. A second link through the play is that the young constable who expected the corrupt politician to be prosecuted for the bike incident becomes the Assistant Chief Constable appointed to advise the Met on the allegation of corruption involving the Soho porn world. I was reminded that Get Carter also centred on the connections between criminal gangs in London and Tyneside was the catalyst a funeral, and where as in most films about the US Mafia, bootlegging, dealing in girls and porn and thefts from business is considered to be acceptable but switching to illegal drugs and child pornography involving is not and often leads to dispute and power battle between the older time criminals and the upstarts who take their place.

Because it is a good but long play which could have done without the African oil dimension, no doubt included now because of Iraq, it would be wrong to quibble too much about where fiction leaves reality someway behind. In the world North East Politics that I know a senior politician would not have pretended non involvement in an accident involving the loss of a bicycle and he would have settled it on the spot replacing the bicycle with a couple of quid for the trouble or it had to be officially reported because the rider of the bicycle had been hurt, then any offence would have been dealt with quietly minimising publicity by inducements to enable the aggrieved party to settle with the minimum of fuss. I also believe that the whole situation regarding the building and subsequent state of the flats in the North East would not have led to a prosecution had not the 1968 Ronan Point disaster occurred when a gas explosion affected a load bearing wall in a 23 storey Tower Block at Newham, site of the 2012 Olympics and new high speed train stop via the Channel Tunnel.

Unfortunately because the servicing of my car was not completed until today. I could not stay for the after show discussion at which the author Peter Flannery was to be attendance. It is probably just as well because I would not have been able top resist asking him the question, Do you think anything has changed given the ending of a four year enquiry into allegations of fraud involving the leadership of a North East local authority in the early 1990's came to nothing and that a similar level of allegations involving child abuse rings involving the police and local and health authority and other big wigs also came to naught? Perhaps that is material for a new play?

1080 Annie Besant and Gandhi

Last night I went to theatre where only five tickets were sold beforehand and the total when the production commenced was nine. This was very sad because it was a well constructed, sometimes intellectual, sometimes, emotional, sometimes factual work, a little humour, but always interesting work about the life of Annie Besant, during in her time in India, the extraordinary writer of over 100 books about Theosophy and other religions, who had commenced her adult life as the wife of a clergyman, and then progressed into a Marxist, a socialist, trade union activist and fighter for Indian self government, although she believed progressed should be made through democratic constitutional means, opposed to Gandhi's use of non violent civil disobedience protest, because it would lead to confrontation and a holocaust. Having said that according to the play when her approach failed she was said to have swung in favour of Gandhi.

I went to the play because of my interest in Gandhi an non violence protest having acquired one of only 2000 first edition translations of Satyagraha in 1960 and the UNESCO work about his life and thoughts, All Men are Brothers purchased on December 1st 1959 and where I wrote on the frontispiece, "this day shall be remembered annually when the way became clear. May the light always shine and may you (I) always have the courage, strength and humility to serve until the end." I was twenty years of age This book helped understand that means to an end are everything and it was three years later that I acquired Huxley's work on the subject. Having gone to the play with one interest and quickly realising it was not about non violence as a means of action to achieve major political and social changes, I had to dig deep to try and remember what I could remember about the principal subject.

What I was reminded in the play and later from the internet was her Marxist, Fabian Socialist, Trade union activist background after breaking from the confines of being the chattel of Clergyman's wife and losing her children to him

Although brought up in a middle class environment by her widowed mother, her mother had no income except which she created from running a boarding house, and it is of considerable interest to me how and why she, having been given a conventional education and upbringing as a young woman expected to marry and raise children, but have no major influence or role in political and social development matters, she rebelled, went to what was then regarded as extremes, and found herself prosecuted over publishing a work promoting birth control and which dared to suggest that working class families would be happier if they could control they number of children they wanted and could afford to raise. She lost her children and became involved with Irish Home Rule, and interest which she maintained after her life became centred on India. She had a relationship with George Bernard Shaw when he was a young man and others and was inclined to change her politics and her views accordingly, Marxism (Edward Aveling), Socialism (William Morris) and Theosophy, where she subsequently took over the leadership from Charles Webster Leadbeater who also achieved international notoriety through his advice for young boys to masturbate as a prelude to an otherwise celibate spiritual life.

The play is written through the eyes of a young India female searcher for the truth, Sidra, (Ruby Sahota) who approaches Annie at the commencement of the play to become a pupil and stayed closely with her "guru" until her death. The play was written by Rukhsana a writer and adaptor of plays, with a first novel and short stories to her credit, and she devised the idea of having an another actor, perform the role of the Sidra, telling the story of her experience, sitting to one side of the stage for each half of the play. This role is played the artistic director of company Dr Vayu Naidu, whose company bears her name and working with the Guildford Yvonne Arnaud Theatre.

The play is also about the relationship between Annie and one of her adopted sons Krishamurti who she had hoped would become an internationally recognised spiritual leader under her direct influence. The plays, I have yet to establish if it is historically accurate, suggest that he was sought out by a visiting seer and warned that he had to find his own truth. This he did after being educated at Oxford and becoming part of the European social scene, announces his approached to an audience which included his shocked mother.

Again I have to disclose my ignorance of his writings until now, but will be something quickly remedied taking precedence over everything else. In the play his statement of belief is its high point and fortunately the programme notes amplify this further. "Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any creed, through any philosophical knowledge, or psychological technique."

For years I have beaten myself up because although I believed I understood the nature of being and how to live and not to do so, I failed in my efforts to integrate into my being all great writings and teachings of philosophy, psychology and spirituality, in so far as I was able to understand, and which has always been limited. I could not justify what I knew to be right or wrong, as a consequence, and here was someone who in 1929, was saying that's Ok, you wont get there by that route alone, the path is a different one. You have to look into yourself and understand your own soul and observe everything in the world around you and then are. You may if driven to do so explain yourself to others if they are interested, but your message must be, do not follow me, accept what I say to you, but find your own solution, this is how I came to be as I am, hopefully something of my experience may of help to you." I now need to find out if this actually what be believed and promoted.

This is not to reject scientific and philosophical knowledge and investigation, for in order to reach an effective and sustaining level of understanding which will enable one to function in different political and social systems, to have satisfying relationships with others and face the possibility of self conscious life ending within a moment, or in prolonged agony of mind and body, one has to acquire and develop abilities to their maximum potential, and this includes removing or quarantining obstacles to making progress,

It is in nature of being that having worked out a truth, the assumption is made that this is the only perspective on truth, that it will not change through further thought and meaningful relationship interactions, and that it will not be different for others. It is not the false prophets without that should be of constant concern, but that of within.

Another stunning piece of writing....Colin have you ever considered being published? Posted by ANGELICLYNORTE on 12:05 - 12:51

1072 Gormenghast

Yesterday I wrote about my often repeated views on the question, who am I? I also suggested the value of talking over the answer with your ancestors. Last night I appeared to be the only Goth at an incredible physical performance of what is regarded as one of the great written works of imagination on the concept of a Gothland created in the twentieth century, Gormenghast, recreated by the David Glass Ensemble at the Newcastle Playhouse. Twice a character asks, what does it all mean? My answer is what you know and what you believe.

This was not a planned visit, although when the season programme arrived, I had made a mental note of this as one of the performances not to be missed. Then MySpace and other matters took over, so it was only on Wednesday that I decided to see what was on at the Playhouse this week, and only then discovered that while there had been a performance that night, there was to be an after performance presentation by the company, on Thursday. I rang at .ten am, when the box office opened, and obtained a seat four rows from the front in a central location.

Usually I undertake research on the company and the play before attending a performance, but because of other commitments, I arrived having only the vaguest recollection of the BBC adaptation and of failing to read the trilogy. For my recent research on the Black and the Goth dimension I had come across countless Myspace sites where I speculated on the depth of commitment of individuals to the cause. On Sunday the majority of the fifty bikers who had gathered on the sea front looked over 30, with a number approaching their sixties. Where are the aging Goths? During the interval, over a cup of strong almost black coffee, I determined to write to 101 Myspace Goths to enquire of if they had read the trilogy of Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus alone. This it will be appreciated as Gothic cheek because I am yet to do so. During the earlier post show chat, where at one point I thought that the audience was going to be outnumbered by the entire ensemble company, an actor commented that there had been occasions when they encountered a row of Goths at the front whose make up was better than theirs, and I wondered if the local tribes would attend Friday or Saturday nights, and if he had spotted that I was dressed in my black sleeveless jacket, black shirt, black trousers and back socks and shoes, or as Benny Hill might say "the oldest Goth in town" although as previously admitted the black hides my overweight and the make up is my natural aging!

I was unprepared for the physicality of this production with its black empty stage, apart from a hidden platform area at the back, and a darkened auditorium so it was impossible to read the programme. You are instantly transported in your imagination to the ginormous Gothic city building of endless corroders, of mystery and gloom and doom. For those like me who had forgotten the story, the first act was primarily an abstract performance art fusion of intense voice, movement, lighting and a visceral sound, live and pre-created, composed by John Escott and Musical Direction by Jonathan Cooper. It was only after one became part of the Mervyn Peake dimension that the story unfolded, and what is in many respects, is a traditional tale, of a situation where the young heir to the throne rebels against the requirements of maintaining the dynasty, imposed by his formidable mother following the disappearance, presumed dead, of his father, and a written constitution of ritual imposed at different times throughout his growing up, coming into conflict with the malevolent designs of a young outsider. Is this really a battle of two opposites, or the struggle within each of us? Is this what our lives are all about?
The characters of the young rebel against his destiny, Titus, is made consistently believable by James Woodbridge, who also plays his father, Sepulchrave, and the bad to his core Steerpike by an equally believable Adam Sunderland, but no one outshines another, except when each is given centre stage, and the others provide support. One way in which Titus rebels is to be drawn to the deliciously ethereal, 'the thing' Played by Elizabeth Collier, whose training as a dancer enabled her to float, while Gertrude Countess of Groan, Sally Mortemore, was convincing, as my mother, in dictating the life of her son, and the protection of the family inheritance, and as one of the damaged identical twin aunts. Elisa de Grey was also convincing as the vulnerable sister Fuchsia who cries out to be savaged by a predator and who switched amazingly into the other identical sister. However she is undone in switching by Eric MacLennan as the grotesque Swelter and the eccentric sympathetic Dr Prunesquallor, and where it was only afterwards I realised it was the same actor. For me the lasting memory will be of Phillip Pellew who as Flay walked the endless corridors in his inimitable and disturbing manner, and who was also the hunchback Master of Ritual, Barguetine, the agent for the rebellion of Titus an also his protector, as is the situation oft in real life. Do not the young always rebel against those with their best intentions at heart? I have mentioned all the cast and by name because of how they fitted into the Ensemble production teams democratic structure, but which only works as well as this when the structure is predetermined by an individual with a singular vision of the script adaptation by John Constable and the overall direction of David Glass. Because I always have found that most live theatre outlives most film experience, and I have spent a lifetime watching most films of substance in the English Language, I am probably being unfair to the BBC drama production, in saying that I suspect this production came closer to communicating the language and intent of the original work. I say this admitting as I have that I am yet to read the text, but will immediately purchase and add to the list of things I need to do before I die.

I read the programme notes when the lights went up for the after show discussion, and rarely, if ever, have I read notes which precisely and comprehensively described the experience I had participated in. Of the ten on stage there was also Associate Director Luke Kernaghan. Others who may have been there but should be mentioned anyway are Rae Smith the designer who drew on the stylised opera of China and Kabuki, Lieustke Visser for the memorable costumes, Spike Mosley for the Original Lighting Direction and Steve Taylor who presumably carried the conception out, Matt Spencer for the technical tricks and Tom Cotterall in addition to holding everything together, along with Marie White made the props, which included a playful monkey whose death caused the young child in the audience to cry out, other parents beware.

I now I turn to the uncanny aspect of this experience. My main reason for always wanting to read the trilogy and also the work on his father by Sebastian Peake, is that as a young man, full of having read the official accounts of the Nuremburg War Crimes trials but before I entered fully into Direct Action and the Committee of 100, I had joined the Local United Nations Associations Association, and was convinced that I had visited the home of Mervyn Peake, in my childhood town of Wallington, when his wife had opened their house for a charity art show. Did I get my idea for ArtmansArthouse then? I had been envious of a full set of drums which I think was in the entrance Hall. I also recollected that the brothers, Sebastian and Fabian went to the St John Fisher School, although I had no recollection of ever having met them.
Before commencing to write these notes as I have done for every theatrical, cinema and entertainment experience since becoming Artman, I did the homework I should done before the performance and on the official Peake family site (see below), I noted that Sebastian had given an e mail address so in the early hours I explained my memory and enquired if could have been accurate. Yesterday I explained that through MySpace I was able to write to departed souls such as Lord Russell and Freda Kathlo, and it was a little scary when they wrote back. This morning only a few hours after sending the e mail, I received an email from Sebastian who confirmed my recollection and asked if he could mention my experience in a work about our mutual childhood town. Now aren't that something and a clue to what it all means?

http://www.mervynpeake.org/gormenghast/
http://www.davidglassensemble.com/

1051 The Night Shift and much else

The Night Shift is a play which been reworked by its author Mark Murphy between stagings and changes in the male character. There have been other Night Shifts, a Stephen King collection of short stories, a 1982 film and a song by the Commodores. I did not enjoy the play because it did not reveal new insights about the human condition and relationships, not did I feel sympathy with its two central characters, yet their performances attracted thirty mins of intense questioning in the subsequent opportunity to meet with the author and actors.

It is possible to explain the basics of the story without ruining dramatic moments and revelations. An ordinary man is living with a woman, who sleeps walks because of something which remains in her subconscious. Such moments are signalled with the use of banks of red lights.

The man cooperates and colludes with the game playing requirements of his partner, and gives the impression of a well meaning person, out of his depths.

The interactions between this couples switches back and forth with the visit of a social worker/counsellor/ therapist figure to a man in a closed psychiatric unit, alleged to have brutally killed his wife in a rage. There is also game playing collusion in this relationship where the "professional" breaks all the rules, compromising her position and the welfare of her client. The story line concerns whether there is a relationship between the event which troubles the woman, the helper and the incarcerated man. There is one explanation given for the behaviour of both women played by the same actor.

My benchmark for drama where someone has the role of a professional doctor/psychiatrist, helper is T S Elliot's Cocktail party, in which the benign father/godlike doctor advises that he can help the woman to get to where she is not but warns it will be different from what she anticipates. He does not disclose what he can see and predict what is likely to happen to her. She will experience a form of salvation. There is no conflict between his professional role and his relationship with the woman. He shows understanding, empathy, compassion for her predicament, but he gets on with his 'normal,' life. This is not to suggest that he does not care about his patient or when what he predicts for her, happens, he not affected.

Most of the audience and those who stayed behind were in their early twenties, but I had noticed two women of a similar age to me and in expert fashion she drew attention that the 'help' figure in the work was a travesty of the role of the average professional, adding that she had some forty years of experience. She reminded me of the woman who headed my professional child care training course, a strict Freudian who discounted behavioural psychology and sociology and with one look into you, penetrated whatever defences you tried to put up, took out your core which she dissected with a clinical effectiveness which made the creations of most sci fi and vampire writers appear cartoons.

During my professional and managerial life I worked closely with a number of psychiatrists including one who used a form of LSD to take patients on a regressive bad trip as a means of freeing them from their devil, an experience which I understood was as horrendous as any exorcism. There was also one psychiatrist who insisted on having a detailed social history from me which was then written up in appropriate terminology including whatever conclusions I had suggested. This reflected her lack of confidence in her assessment as much as confidence in my work, although in fairness I did come across individuals whose reports to courts struck me as having only a limited relevance to the individual and their families whose future was under consideration. I soon learnt that simply because an individual successfully completed a course and passed examinations did not mean that any kind of standard or common performance level could be expected. All my subsequent experience confirmed this impression applied across the range of professionals, doctors, lawyers, accountants, educators and professionals in social welfare work. Try explaining the difference between a psycho analyst, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a psychotherapist, a counsellor or social worker to someone threatening suicide.

This is not to suggest that I ever set myself up as an equal or an effective practitioner, having undertaken only a term of psychology tutorials with a behaviourist among his rats at the Oxford Institute of Experimental Psychology and where most of the time was used to try and get me to abandon going into social work and attempt a Philosophy and Psychology degree at the University. I did buy and read Bertrand's Russell's History of Western Philosophy and understood a little, but John-Paul Sartre’s "Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, Being and Nothingness", which defeated then, and a quick look now confirms that it is still beyond my grasp without a prolonged preparatory study. Fortunately I have had the ability to know what I do not know, although this has never prevented me from doing, or saying what I wanted, such as defining what contemporary art means at this moment and in this dimension. I continues with my studies which including some knowledge of psychiatry, psychology and sociology, passed examination to my amazement and my practical work was assessed as being of a standard sufficient to gain the certificate of approval to function.

Previously I did once stand on a Trafalgar Square platform alongside Lord Bertrand Russell having become a member of his Committee 100, and according to his wife upset him greatly when I wrote to warn that his main lieutenant appeared to have no understanding of Aldous Huxley's work on Ends and Means, forecasting that the project would end in disaster, resigning from the committee, and therefore avoided the round up which sent him and a number of his confederates to varying periods of imprisonment. However performing the role of the boy, or girl, who declares in public that the King or Queen is wearing no clothes, is not to be recommended if you hanker for a normal existence.

I was reminded of my one communication failure with Lord Russell because his posthumous site on MySpace has the except of an interview with him about the nature of fanaticism in which he warns of the dangers of becoming such an enthusiast for or against something that you hate and will do anything to destroy those with opposing positions. He then explains that this is bad enough when restricted to one or a few individuals but becomes dangerous and harmful when adopted by large groups, such political parties, and religions. He points out that it was only when Rome converted to Christianity did the empire become anti Semitic and that the behaviour of the fanatic should be regarded as madness, albeit madness of a collective and possible temporary nature. Even more striking is his argument against action which is illegal. It is Ok to campaign to change a law but in a democracy it is generally wrong to set out to break the law in order to make a point.

Given this extract from an interview (undated) it is understandable that his consistency in argument and ethical integrity was questioned when he gave his name to the Committee of 100 and was successfully prosecuted by the state for his part in promoting mass civil disobedience against the democratically elected government. He answered his critics in the final chapter of an enlarged polemic pamphlet, "Common Sense and Nuclear War," George Allen and Unwin 1959 in which he pointed out that it is not wrong to amend or change policies and approaches according to changing circumstances. He gives the example of someone on a train which breaks down at a station and where there is no prospect of reaching the destination by the required time, and that the sensible action is to get off the train and seek another means of getting to your destination. He argued that the situation had significantly changed once more than one nation possessed a weapon of mass destruction and where the likelihood was that possession of the weapon would spread and would eventually come under the control of lunatics who could come to take power in government, reminding that this had been the situation in Nazi Germany and what would have happened if Hitler had been able to develop an atomic weapon.

It may be considered that Russell was a serious intellectual, a man apart who in a one sense is so but he was also 'normal.' One of his great essays is "In Praise of Idleness," in which he confessed that he was brought up on the basis that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do, and that having been a virtuous child he developed a conscience which kept him working hard until old age but although his conscience controlled his actions, his opinions had undergone a revolution and there was far too much work done in the world and that immense harm was caused because of the belief that work is virtuous regardless of what that work involves. Another highly recommended work is the Conquest of Happiness which while accepting that everyone is dependent on external factors, he argues that we can achieve a state of wellbeing by having sufficient food, shelter, health, love, and companionship, satisfying work and social respect. However it is also possible to be happy without a balance of normal ingredients but it takes an exceptional person to do so. His argument in favour of seeking happiness is because happy people tend to have a happy outlook, support happy lifestyles and going in for politics, religions and beliefs which breed happiness, and vice versa. However as he points out at the beginning of "The Problems of Philosophy", is there knowledge in the world which is so certain than no reasonable person can doubt it? And of course being a philosopher he has to answer that this is one of the most difficult questions to answer.

I have tonight used as much time reflecting on aspects of my experience of the life and work of Bertrand Russell, (I also have the Ronald Clark biography), as I spent watching Night Shift although I regret neither because I had a good time in both instances. It is also why I frequently use time watching rubbish, watching others work or watching them just being. Nor did I feel incensed at the portrayal of the professional helper, although I did contemplate attempting to contact the individual to remind that the character in the play was a counsellor, that is someone who supports others and whose role is not to treat or change, and that from my experience the individual who can show caring, however badly trained and lacking in professionalism is a hundredth fold more likely to be help than one who maintains clinical detachment.

My first ever visit to a family, was arranged as a student undertaking my first practical work assignment with a Family Service Unit. The woman was established in the region as heading a problem family of three generations and was one of the first to appear on television in this role. The local authority had knocked two houses together such had been the size of her family who had since grown up, although a few would return later in the afternoon from school. She sat at one end of a double lounge with her husband next to her, and I sat before her with another family member and her offspring, and for two hours I listened as she went through the legion of social workers, students and officials who she had known over two and a half decades, telling me of their good points, their failing and it was as effective a course in human behaviour as you can ever get from a textbook. I grasped the fundamental truth that not only if you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you, but the abyss will see as much or more of you that you can see of it.

1048 Cymbeline, Kneehigh Theatre Cornwall

In October 2006 I discovered the Cornish Theatrical Company of Kneehigh www.kneehigh.co.uk and remembered my Cornish experiences of forty years ago. The first family holiday could have been something of a disaster because the car broke down on the way, was abandoned to a local garage care of the A. A. and amazingly the struggling gears got us to a car park where it so happened there was a coach taking a break before going to Penzance which was around the corner for fishing village of Mousehole where a cottage had been rented. We arrived about the same time as planned. The absence of the vehicle over the weekend and until repairs were completed meant getting know the immediate area.

The following year or year the year after, there was a return visit, longer in duration, staying near the beach houses on stilts at Hayle, close to St Ives, and which was subsequently discovered to have a similar atmosphere to Gruissan near Narbonne. This was the era when everyone was rushing off to exceptionally cheap holidays in Spain and Greece and even in the heights of summer it was possible to find miles of almost deserted sea coast and countryside and undiscovered artists at work.

Two treasures which evoke memories are a Newlyn Pottery Troika Aztec Vase and a water colour view of Mousehole. One of several vivid memories is a delightful meal at a French restaurant at St Ives, third in memory of great meals with one eaten in France at Beziers, and to the meal of meals at Le Toquet 1981 where although an early arrival the meal spread until the room was crowded with other diners, all French speaking. I can remember starting with a bottle of Sancerre, drunk before the Crabbe de la Mere was demolished, and which had followed a Salad Maison Jambon. The main dish was Roquet Andelouse, followed by crème caramel and coffee, and Port on the house. Of course part of the memory is the company and the ambiance but they were all experiences which cannot be repeated.
Such was the affection for Cornwall that I acquired a historical Map, Arthur's Mee, King's England and a desire to take up sailing.

It was not surprising to learn that in 1980 a village school teacher decided to run theatre workshops in his spare time and in due course a mixture of people, a farmer, and a sign writer from Tesco, several students, a thrash guitarist from a local band and an electrician. but no actors or anyone trained began to make performances.

There was no theatre or arts centre in Cornwall, and this I suspect is their secret, because although they would have gained knowledge, there was no inherited culture either to guide or control their destiny, they had to make their own.

Kneehigh started to perform to families in locations within their communities; village's halls, marquees, harbour sides and less conventional places. They created theatre on cliff tops, in preaching pits, and quarries.

The company now finds itself celebrated as one of Britain's most exciting touring companies. (Yes it is) Spontaneous sense of risk and adventure. A DEFINING THEATRIAL FORCE. "Cornwall is our physical and spiritual home. We draw inspiration from landscapes. History, People and culture." Admittedly only one performance was experienced but everything which was said about them and their interpretation of Cymbeline provided one of the great afternoons in theatre, shared by the young people present a few even older than me. This is the company for introducing children to real theatre a form of pantomime for intelligent and creative adults who retain the child within.

The set was simple but also elaborate, a metal structure representing enclosed palace/ Italian Brothel/Night club, which can be climbed, with levels. including the musicians platform also used to represent rooms. This group makes their own music and records which adds to their comprehensiveness of performance. They also sing well. They act without appearing to act.

The performance manages to communicate the complex story which is often difficult to grasp in Shakespeare comedies without having prior study of the text, they retained something of the original poetry translated into a contemporary context. The music and song is good, and I bought the CD and theatrical devices clever an appealing to all ages. The horror and tragedy is similarly covered, so real that when the soft toy heart of a small deer is taken adult cried out in genuine anguish which made the children laugh.

The show lasted two and half hours plus an interval at two thirds way sufficient for the majority to get some refreshment but not everyone. I had my regular seat.

I sent a letter saying how much I had enjoyed the experience, registered as a Friend which brought a Christmas card signed by the company, and later from the National Theatre on line bookshop, I was able to buy a copy of some of the plays previous performed, such was the enthusiasm generated.

It would be good to return to Cornwall, retracing memories and attending a performance of the company in their homeland, but where in the queue of the others, is this experience to be placed? All those Isles of Greece still to visit, Rome, Montecassino, Venice and Sorrento, Paris, and a dozen towns, or a score other French places, Uppsala, the Anne Frank Museum, the battlefields and cemeteries of Belgium and North France, Munich because I once drove through after not finding the municipal campsite, Salzburg and the Gross Glockner and all those places of memories in the Uk? I managed to return to all the places where I lived, studied and worked. I suspect I will have to settle continue to what I am doing, which is to recreate the experience in this way.

1040 The History of the World in Two Hours

I begin the search for me with a search for others. In the beginning there was a man called Adam and a woman called Eve, and then there was me, and then there are you, and we are connected. Adam and Eve are concepts, just as Genesis is a document of faith and not a history of the world in ancient times. In an average life there are two billion seconds of time to experience and remember. In the autumn of 2006 I witnessed the Enforced Entertainment company attempt to perform the history of the world in two hours: The World in Pictures.

The performance commenced with a bare stage and a long prologue. The stage was traditional with the second area of Stage 2, used as an epic stage for Son of Man, closed off.

The performance that followed is remembered against having spent two and a half hours in excruciating uncomfortableness experiencing the company's presentation of the Performance Artwork of Sophie Calle's Exquisite Pain. A visual extravaganza of movement and sound during which I wanted to cheer, clap, get up and join in Rocky Horror show style, forgetting my age and appearance as the oldest foggy present among very young audience, who I guessed had come without much prior knowledge of what was take place. There was plenty of nervous giggles when one of the actors went nude and at some of the vulgar (in the nicest way) gesturing but there was no joining in which I find confusing.

Perhaps by the time the majority have come to university they are already doing their own thing freed from the kind of parental institutional controls we experienced in the fifties and sixties, when first there was, shock horror, dancing in the aisles of cinemas when middle aged Bill Haley Rocked around the Clock and then there was the invitation to join the cast dancing on stage at the end of Hair, and where the general nudity was secondary to the emphasis on drugs so that two LPs had to be issued, the first excluding the songs about drugs, although I still hear plays of the Mick Jagger and the Stones extolling the virtues of Brown Sugar.

Perhaps some did go to excess but there was some justification childhoods with the prospect of death and injury from bombs, the deprivations which lasted into the later 1940’s and then the threat of nuclear annihilation or the slow death from radiation. Now the young just have to worry about a few terrorist atrocities and a student loan, although they do have the guilt that a third of the world starving and the general misuse of the planet.

So how were these, and the preceding events, of world history covered? Enjoyably, but with the serious intention to give the audience at least one concept which would survive the subsequent layering of new experiences, a point which was emphasised in the epilogue as the audience made to depart. We were reminded that what seems important, enjoyable, painful, challenging, or whatever changes, as soon as we move to a new experience the previous is altered, ad ion and on until experience is often lost to immediate recall, although not its influence.

Within the space of a few days I had seen one performance which comprised going over and over one short experienced of a few hours in a hotel room, and then an attempt within two to cover the experience of human beings on the earth planet.

My understanding and belief is that all experience continues to exist through the transfers of memory between generation biologically as well as through speech, writing, and recording of sound and vision and that the experience can be viewed by everyone, everywhere throughout the universe who have the technology and other abilities to do so. Such is experience is good and beneficial and evil and harmful swinging one way and another depending on the accumulated actions of everyone with the implication that every good deed however unnoticed is of value as is every contested act of evil.

1034 And death has no Dominion Dylan Thomas

In the autumn of 2006 I attended a one man performance which merited a significantly larger audience as those present would have fitted comfortably into auditorium two, and better still the bar lounge atmosphere of the stage three area, given the subject of show. The life of Dylan Thomas told through his verse.

The soul and the sin of the man filled the place for a couple of hours and then we went our respective ways. I sometimes wish I had the kind of mission of the Sin Eater, cleansing souls, or even that of Soul Collector which appeared in a fantasy series, Star Trek next generation, whose concept was to protect and nurture souls, although in this the Collector messed up and collected from a planet that we not ready to give up its ghost.

What have I have done, and continue to do, is to try and collect something of the creative genius of others so that it inspires, stimulates and modifies my existence, stretching its dimension. I think John Betjeman came first, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn furnished and burnished in the Surrey sun of my home county, and then there was my own Brideshead of Byron Shelley and Keats although T S Elliot, Waste Land, Four Quartets and his play the Dinner Party heard on steam radio and then read and read avidly as I tried to help myself to get where I was not, knowing it would be different from what I anticipated and hoped for.

I cannot remember or recorded when, also on the radio, I heard that Welsh voice rage raging against the dying of the light which fitted into my anarchistic subversive protesting tendencies, and it was sometime in my late thirties, (I could look it up as I have the programme) that I experienced a theatrical performance of Under Milk Wood and the Newcastle Theatre Royal, and rushed off to read and later acquire a video, and a voice recording, and then later still in my fifties there was a trip of a few days to South Wales and Laugharne, to his cottage with Caitlin, going to one of the pubs and bookshops. His voice still fills the cottage fifty, now sixty years after souls departed and I acquired duplicate voice recordings to occasionally recapture the moment of that experience.

Unsurprising in the autumn of 2006 the majority of the audience was as old, some even older and quite a number were solitary men.

If you can't paint the way you want the word pictures can be just as good and less expensive to replicate.

Because we were so few in number there was room to stretch and enjoy the conversation which developed between a university student, and a young women, and then an older person of my years who sat between them and could not resist joining in, so I did too when the opportunity arose.

The talk was not of Dylan but what had been done to the theatre with millions of pounds acquired when the city hoped next year they would become the European centre of culture although the main developments have been created on the bank of the Tyne in Gateshead. We lost out to Liverpool, punishment I suspect for rejecting the offer of regional government.

We were generally enthusiastic about the changes and developments, but not one other young man who breathed black fire on what had happened.

The performance was simple, the actor standing at a lectern or sitting on a chair, mixing the poems and excerpts with stories and some chronology. If this was the turn out for one the great sons of Wales and poets in he British Language what hope had I for imagining that any one would to come and hear me ramble incoherently about my experiences, although there had been time when I could keep the attention of a sympathetic group for an hour and more about a subject of interest to them.

I have not mentioned the actor who was to the same for Truman Capote the following day. I am even lazier so I will endeavour to mention his name another time. He was excellent and enabled the soul of another to live on. And death has no dominion and I no longer rage about the dying of the light

This is a poor note on an important evening and I will make amends by writing about the work and the life at greater length on a future occasion, as long as death remains to have its dominion. I no longer rage but experience sadness and regret at the dying of the light.

1033 Denis Potter's The Son of Man

I have watched several versions of the Passion of Christ and in my childhood and as a young man I participated in the Stations of the Cross every Good Friday. But I did not become a witness until viewing Mel Gibson's Passion in cinematic theatre. I have owned the DVD for at least two Easters, but it will be the forthcoming time before I will be able to cope with the viewing experiences once more.

Shortly after the opening of the redeveloped New Playhouse Theatre I attended a performance of the Denis Potter play, Son of Man with doubts whether anything could measure up to the Mel Gibson reality. This used what was intended to be the epic stage, a combination of a stages one and two. This was short lived development/

The previous evening I had watched a DVD of the remarkable short life of Sophie Scholl with its subject the self sacrifice for the good of others. I have often wondered how I would face up to the reality of death in situation when you are given choice, do this and you live, don't do that and you live and what would I do? It is not the kind of choice those of us born children during world war 2 have had to face, unless we joined some armed service, became fireman, or such other help and rescue services, or been in situation where the choice was ones own life or that of a partner, child or parent, or someone one did not know.

I have the possibility of death three times. Once in a relatively new car, returning late and tired from a weekend in Manchester/or it may have been from over the Pennines in West Yorkshire but going cross country to Oxford, I turn off the lights by accident going around a bend and could only think of trying to turn the car around, expecting to hit something and expecting to be hurt. I did what I set out to do turning the car to face the opposite direction, and although I damaged the axel on wheel that was the only damage and I was able to drive to my home. The other two instances had occurred before. Once in prison, something I said or did not say triggered another inmate who placed a headlock which cab be damaging and even lethal if you struggle. I was able to relax and prepared myself to accept what was to happen. He was so surprised by this unexpected response that he let go, Later he apologise and tried to explain himself. However both of these situations were not of my making. After release I became involved in the organisation of a project which aimed at drawing attention to the obscenity of sitting a base for nuclear missile submarines in of the most beautiful and peaceful parts of this earth. Because I could not then swim I decided against participating in a demonstration which involved sharing a canoe. I did join a more substantial craft where the authorities first attempted to swamp by turning hoses at full power and then when our engine failed we were cleverly pushed by a government craft against a buoy as we attempted to transfer protestors from our craft to a larger one, so that for a few second sit looked that we would sandwich between the towering buoy and the rescue craft. The collision was missed by a second or so and we were then towed to the shore by a combination craft we had become all the rage, this was motor vehicle which could also function and a motor boat. In all three situations I remember being calm and prepared for the worst. It is therefore the prospect of pain rather than death that I think is the challenge.

It was this sense of real pain which I missed from the Potter play however well acted and set. The play has attracted wider media interest than theatrical criticism because of the portrayal of Pontius Pilot as an intelligent and thinking man who had to calculate the best options in the difficult political and social circumstances of his situation. The play however had a significant moment when towards he end of the first act the Sermon on the Mount was used by actor directly challenge the audience insisting that everyone hold hands, touch, fondle and caress each other which was Ok for established partners but questionable in relation to everyone else, More convincing was the portrayal of Jesus as an I thought the portrayal of Jesus as a essentially weak 'ordinary', 'normal', man with a sense of destiny and personal conviction who knew his time had come and was consequently able to lead, to preach and command an audience, and then to die in pain, was well done. Afterwards people went to the bar, or to their cars or public transport and I did not see anyone sitting stunned in their seats or visibly distressed as happened when seeing Mel Gibson's passion in a central London cinema theatre.
For this performance the main stage of the Playhouse had been stripped bare revealing the side wings ad removing the partition between this stage and stage two. Stage two as previously recorded has been created from the old Gulbenkian first floor studio and dressing rooms old Green Room below. It is still necessary to enter the new auditorium at first floor level and then descend to the removable seats to the floor level which form the stage space for productions such as Exquisite Pain. If you sit in the first row you are part of the production which the actors standing over you. For the Son of Man the sating had been dismantled so that the stage one extends to stage the floor the auditorium. However once does not encompass the whole of the area as there is the real wall structure which in addition to the wings has a lintel which is this instance restricted the view of part of the set construction. It was difficult to work what was gained by the use of this super stage. Moreover the partitioning at that point took expensive labour and time to remove and out back up. It prevented the use of the second stage from an income viewpoint and there is a sound proofing problem with some kinds of performances involving music and work designed to engage the involvement of children. The outcome is that the double stage has not been used since, the seating in the auditorium of stage two has been improved and the partition strengthened

1031 The Equisite Pain of Sophie Calle

26.10.2006 .The use of Jokerman script for Exquisite Pain (27.09.2006 Newcastle Playhouse) is at one level appropriate.(Original Blog) It is not a play but a performance art work where the setting of a seated fixed audience for two and a half hours is inappropriate, one needed to be able to walk about

12.03.2007 if you have not been to the theatre to experience acting for sometime then Exquisite Pain is not the work to go and see. It is not a play but performance art using exceptionally talented actors. (I can say this because I also watched them perform a total theatre experience of the history of "The World in Pictures," two days later).

You sit with increasing discomfort for two and a half hours with interruption. The discomfort is physical and emotional and is an appropriate way to experience the work. I would have preferred to have walked about a bit but keeping within listening distance.

This autobiographical work, previously performed by the artist and available in book form, is by Sophie Calle, born in Paris in 1953. 1985 her lover and older man failed to meet her as arranged in New Delhi midway between where she had been for several months and where she had previously lived, She was devastated by the experience, rather than traumatised and was able to work through the disappointment, humiliation, and victim guilt, because she was a creative using photo, memorabilia and words, but kept a record of how her perception of the event changed through linear time.

26.10.2006 The performance consist of one person telling the story of dealing with a traumatic experience and how the view of that experience changes over time, one blames oneself, one blames the other person one gets angry at being affected so much yet because one wanted and hopes for resolution reconciliation one clings the hope for a different outcome because that it is a possibility but the reality is that when you compare such an experience with the experience of others you realise that however painful it is insignificant to the realities of the succession of tragedies and horrors which are told in a dead pan and sometimes humorous way.

13.03.2007 Sophie Calle could have just created a performance work in which she recounted the same experience over the subsequent days, weeks and months, reporting and observing changes in detail, consideration, feelings, attitude and judgement. This could have been a complete work. She did not.

On her return to Paris, she asked a group of friends to answer the question, "When did you most suffer?" Their stories of pain, each of them accompanied by a photograph, interplay with Calle's own story and daily reflections—"It is now seventy-five days since the man I love left me"—creating a testament to the heartache of romantic rejection. 130 illustrations, 71 in color. Amazon.Com.

27.09.2006 the university car park was free tonight, I usually pay £2. I enjoyed the salad and timed everything much better. It is the right thing to do to take the car although it would be sensible to work out the motorway way route back. It is ridiculous that you cannot enter the theatre at this level with the choice if steep steps or walking around the theatre up the slope.

28.02.2007. The revised travel arrangements to the Playhouse and other evening outings to Newcastle are now working well. I still visit my mother and then take the car to the Hewarth short stay car park adjacent to the taxi rank and metro station. I eat the picnic meal in the car and then continue the journey by metro train. On the way there is now a sign which suggests it might be possible to enter the theatre directly from the car park. It is.

27.09.2006 this is my first experience of the new second theatre space. For on the Town when both spaces were combined the audience sat on tiered seating the width of the second space facing into the main auditorium and banked seating. Previously we sat on similar seating in a semi circle around the stage which I like to call eyeball theatre. Now there is conventional tiered seating with not much space to move legs unless you sit on an aisle or the front row where you will feel part of the performance. I chickened out and sat mid row, fortunately one vacant seat so there was some manoeuvrability. My ticket was free as part of a five main theatre subscription packaged. Many in the audience were students.

Unsurprisingly there was a plea for funds at the end and I decide to give £10 which is slightly more than the average of £7 requested. Free programme included.

13.03.2007. The incorporation of the stories of the experiences of Calle's friends was inspirational. Each story communicates an aspect of physical and emotional pain but the accumulation of experience helps to put her experience into perspective

At the end of the World in Pictures chorus makes the valid point that however much the average member of the audience enjoys, appreciates, is moved or challenged by the event, it will become submerged under layers of new experiences of varying intensity and significance.

26.10.2006 There was also an after performance session with the two actors, and the company director chaired by a local cultural figure. I had only 'discovered' this extraordinary the company through the internet during the afternoon and had become so interested that I abandoned my work programme. The amazing aspect is that the core actors had been together throughout their working lives having come together at university. At the discussion I clanged by concertinaing this time, having misinterpreted an aspect of the internet information. I also wanted to know if the order in which the stories of the friends are recounted is changed according performance. It is not although if the work was mine I would have included the variations.

13.03.2007. Calle's work and the performance by the Forced Entertainment company is at the core of my work and confirms that what I am doing is only original in its particular form, at least I hope that is the position, but the concepts are already aspects of the work of professional contemporary creative of international reputation. However I do not regret only entering back through the portal of my occupational dimension of four decades into my first period of full time creative endeavour. Now I have a lot to say even if I continued to be limited in the means of expression.

14.02.2009 I have become more influenced by this work since first experience than any other cultural event because it has fitted so well into the dilemma I found of never settling on anything because each time I relived the experience the experience my perception has changed. Some of the cultural event writing has been recast three times as development activity with AOL, then on My Space and now with Google plus going back because the subject has reappeared, so I need to consider because of the interaction with another event.

1006 Lypsynch experience reviewed

Yesterday 24th February 2207. I experienced total theatre, a farce, a comedy and a satire, also a melodrama, drama, mystery and a thriller which included an operatic aria, operatic duet, rock and pop and karaoke, a comprehensive exploration of language, voice and speech, which included an education into the reality of film making, and a complex story where every cause and consequence becomes explained and every question answered.

Not surprisingly the performance last approximately four and half hours, excluding two intervals.

The quality of the work and the quality of the performance was outstanding. Only the ending disappointed although this is a work still in creation and therefore the present conclusion which felt rushed and failed to realise the expectation of its opening.

The work? Lipsynch led by Robert Lepage and a collaboration between Ex Machina, and Theatre sans Frontieres with Cultural Industries Lid and Northern Stage

Theatrical Art is a conduit between those creating the work and everyone who interacts with the performance, each bringing to the event their anticipation, immediate circumstance and previous experience. My experience over the past year has confirmed an impression that the majority of an audience select to attend because of the performance type with the musical being much in fashion and the Shakespearean classical commanding both an established, and an ever changing young audience studying English Literature. True there are those who attend out of curiosity or because they are taken by someone, or are, or hope to be active in the creative and performing process, and those who follow the work of a company or that of an individual performer.

The nature of audience participation appears to be governed by the preponderance of those who know in advance the form of the work. If branded a comedy people will look to laugh at every opportunity and if a musical they will give applause at the end of each number. The performance of the opening of Lipsynch, an operatic aria deserved a standing ovation, which I hope would have been given if performed in an opera house, or billed as an opera, but was met with silence at the Northern Stage. Is this an over reaction from someone who four years ago changed his life as a consequence of a day divided between the Saatchi MOMA and Tate Modern? My emotional being remains raw and open.

Since the commencement of 2007 I have attended three forms of live performance. I have been among 50000 at events where the majority paid months in advance up to four times the maximum of a Lipsynch ticket cost, and where a greater number than the total audience for the week, paid even more for tickets to a single event. The expectation of the majority of these audiences indicates that they anticipated to be frustrated and disappointed by the experience, but attended because they had already paid or lived in hope of something better. In reality they received perhaps a 10th, perhaps a 100th of what the Lipsynch experience provided.

There was a time, until about a decade ago, when the audience at these performances were active participants giving voice in song and shout to prejudice and hostility, of a foul and offensive nature, towards half the performers, the director and some of the supporting production staff and towards a separated section of the audience. Some ignored the performers and concentrated on self expression. This aspect of the audience participation has been successfully suppressed, although it is evidently just below the surface. Two exceptions are still allowed, hostility shown towards performers based in London and their supporters from where ever they live, or when the neighbouring team and supporters visit. This season there has also been the unthinkable, mass booing of home performers. Whereas in the past the nature of audience participation reflected local tribal loyalty to performers, now the performers are of international origin, frequently changing their loyalty between production teams and sometimes none of the performers having any link with the with the audience locality.

I also attended a performance event of 10000, repeated over two days, where the audience also paid more than the top price Lipsynch for a ticket, having previously invested tens of pounds over ten weeks in voting for individual performers. The noise level of the performances was so high that the quality of the sound was adversely affected, but was necessary because the noise level of the audience, (with one notable exception), and where some performers gave this kind of participation every encouragement, by calling on the audience to support, even to the extent of putting on city football shirts, which was brave because of its regional nature. Afterwards there were universal expressions of enjoyment and money's worth. The final performer deserved several standing ovations, but the audience was of the wrong composition and mood but her time will come when the cost of seat will be priceless.

Whereas men and teenagers are predominate in the 50000 events, women, girls and children were predominant among the 10000, and where I suspect I was the oldest present. This all contrasted with the third event where the audience was under 500, and the seat price less than maximum at Lipsynch, despite the performer being of international good reputation over four decades. Because the audience knew the work of the performer well, they listened intently and then gave applause, sometimes prolonged, at appropriate points after each number, and standing in ovation at the end.

The events were Newcastle United AFC, the X Factor finalists show tour and Ritchie Havens, also on tour.

I had no previous knowledge of the Ex Machina company, or the work of Robert Lepage, who initiated the concept, except for the Northern stage advance publicity, and despite having planned to do so, work activities prevented internet research. I had attended a performance in Spanish by Theatre San Frontieres, (a company, collaborating with Ex Machina) and which brought back memories of having been brought up six decades earlier in a Gibraltarian speaking household in England who did not teach me their language. I had also seen all the theatrical productions at the Playhouse since its re-opening, except for those designed for children. Northern Stage had become a partner in planning the Lipsynch theatrical production. My only expectation about the form of Lipsynch was that it might be like the Performance Art of 'Exquisite Pain' (the Enforced Theatre Company) and where at the end of their 'World in Pictures,' chorus warns the audience that whatever the immediate response to a work, it quickly becomes submerged by the layers of subsequent experience.

This seems to me to be particularly true for those who visit the theatre as part of their consumption culture. Those who do not want to feel uncomfortable and challenged by the eyeball experience of human beings baring the soul of others, and through them their own, stay away. The young woman in Exquisite Pain recounts over and over again, mirroring the linear passage of time, what happened one night when she was dumped by a lover, the memory of the details and of the emotions aroused, changes, at first only slightly, and then significantly because of subsequent experience. Most people cannot cope with such reality, and even less prepared to pay for such an experience.

This is a Blog and Blog asks for moods to be indicated and was there not a play about people going to and leaving a play. My mood has been euphoric having celebrated the 100th birthday of my mother, who despite severe memory loss with psychosis, is generally happy. The mood has been dampened by receiving two reports from the Health Ombudsman regarding the premature and preventable death of her sister, and my care mother, four years ago, and which required, and will require of me, more time, and distress.

I made no attempt to search for a review in advance or until I have completed this writing of my experience and reaction. I was very intrigued by the brief reference in advance publicity to the 'search for father in western society,' and was stunned when the story line struck so many chords with my own background, with my former professional work, and which had continued after retirement after 2003. Having a discovered Mediterranean ancestry, primarily Spanish and Maltese, with some Italian and English Wiltshire, also raised personal interest levels because the work involves parts where the first language is German, French, Italian and Spanish, used to explore aspects of language and communication, and how digital communication and digital gadgetry can be used to overcome all differences, including those of distance.

I had not anticipated that the work would have any coherent story line, and therefore one which attempts to explain and resolve all issues was unexpected. An opera singer, en route is asked to hold the baby of a young mother who suddenly dies. The woman adopts the child, and part of the story is the relationship between a boy who does not know anything about his father and then finds a relationship with a step father difficult, and where one proposition is that young men are jealous and threatened by their fathers. The work explores who the girl was, and how she came to be on flight with the child, and how and when, the son comes to also learn the truth of his mother and of his parentage. Substitute parents always attempt to protect, usually for good reasons, while the child in question has a lifelong need to know, even if they come to wish they never did (The Bad Mother's Handbook of Kate Long should be the bible on this). Part of my creative work since retirement has been about what happens when late in life you discover that your ancestral identity is different from what you were led to believe and with the added irony that one aspect of my occupational activity involved helping others to gain the truth of their biological identity.

Another theme which struck several chords is the proposition that there is a multiplicity of causes and consequence for each event existing in parallel dimensions. I wrote my first and only attempt at a play in 1960 after volunteering to complete six months in prison in preference to entering into a recognisance to keep the peace which involved stopping my work as an independent non violent, weapons of mass destruction inspector, in Essex, and elsewhere. The play was sent to the English Stage company at the Royal Court, and unsurprisingly rejected, although a note was added, " However, they (their readers) did feel that your play was interesting and consequently we would be very pleased to read anything else you may have written."

I had not completed anything and instead of devoting all my energy to doing so, I chose to move through a series of related portals away from active artistic creativity, into further education, professional training, child care social work and child care work and then social services management. In 1985 I was advised, while attending an international residential senior management course, that I was a creative intellect working in an unsympathetic environment which although confirmed what I knew, added analysis and implications which I did not. It was not until a sequence of related events spread over less than the year 2002-2003 that I decided to cross back through an open portal into the dimension of artistic creativity, as a contemporary concept and installation worker, having discovered that throughout the previous decades others had been thinking and doing what I had been thinking, and to a less extent, doing, in my separate dimension. Lipsynch is divided into potentially self contained one act dimensions with refer and link into the others. At times you are puzzled despite close attention, especially with the significance of the fourth act, and where those sitting immediate behind me also had the same problem, and I am still not certain about the value of this act except as used to explore aspects of communication and understanding surrounding social and ritual behaviour towards death, and to give another slant on father son relationships.

I was much more at home and impressed by the lead and other characters involved in the unmasking of child/young person abusers, knowing from personal experience how victims are for ever haunted and lack any meaningful sense of justice, while some, not only victims, will ruthlessly and obsessively seek to unmask and punish.

I am impressed by the technical integrity and sensitivity in which the subject was treated and which for me was at heart of the Lipsynch story taking precedence over the search for father.

In Lipsynch it seemed to me that the father was demonised with no explanation attempted why he had come to behave as he had, although I wondered if we were expected to understand this from the behaviour of the son, and what happens when father sees himself in the mirror through the presence of his son: Look into the abyss and! There was evidently much serious attempt to explain and link the behaviour of everyone else.

After 24 hours I consider the opening act to be one of the most powerful and moving experiences I have encountered in the theatre. I thought the performance of the opening aria without build up extraordinary. Given the quality of the subsequent individual plays and performances I was disappointed with the finale which I had expected to be at least as powerful and moving as the opening, whereas the emphasis appeared to be on providing an explanation and resolution. I had expected at least an aria leaving the audience in silence, challenged. Perhaps a quintet of the five languages, synchronised in harmony to indicate the provision of a go home contentment from resolved ending, only to be followed by discordant Babel to remind of reality? True this aspect was there in the restaurant scene and the making of the autobiographical film.

I remain puzzled by the emphasis on one explanation and one resolution given the proposition of a multiplicity of causes for each event and outcome although this may have been part of the grand design, having educated the audience through the artificiality of film making with the possibility of adding and changing every component separately, and as was also done through the creation of the railway station announcement. Perhaps my reaction is related to having expected the work to more abstract and where in the end there are no answers and when those which appear to have been are opened out to more questions.

I am not sure if the attempt to be all things to all and to undertake such a comprehensive exploration of the use of voice, speech and language added to the value of the core concept. As I tried to demonstrate in my introduction it is possible to create and develop a popular cultural performance experience with the public paying in several ways for the same event, enabling high wages and corporate profit. I also tried to demonstrate my difficulty in sustaining quality and consistency over increasing length. Whether intended or not Lipsynch communicated the extent to which technology enables greater consistency and comprehensiveness through the use creation of the Train station announcements and ways of building up the segment of a film by separately adding/changing artists, sound and voice.

My problem with the present production of Lipsynch is that I did not find the totality as satisfying or challenging as the first act led me to anticipate and because of the overall quality of the components and the performances. In singling out the actor who portrayed the operatic singer and substitute mother, and the actor who covered the old woman, the camp hairdresser and the detective, this is not to downgrade the work of everyone else. The removal of the brain tumour was excruciatingly magnificent. But most of all I shall never forgot that opening aria and the difficulty I had not to cry.